Thursday 16 August 2012 09.17 EDT
First published on Monday 3 September 2012 09.35 EDT

10.47pm BST

We're going to wrap up today's live blog politics coverage. Thanks for playing! Here's a summary of where things stand:

Mitt Romney announced that he had reviewed his last ten years of tax returns and he has "never paid less than 13%." What did he mean? Harry Reid called baloney on the claim. If only there was some easy way for him to prove it.

Romney said "The fascination with taxes I paid seems to be very small-minded compared to the issues we face."

The Romney campaign announced that Paul Ryan would appear at a campaign event in Florida this weekend with a secret weapon: his mother. Her presence presumably meant to rebut the notion that Ryan's plan is threatening to Medicare. The Ryan plan: a budget only a mother could love?

10.21pm BST

Here is Paul Ryan in 2011 explaining why he had ruled out a run for president and talking at length about why Congress is his calling. The last question: Any thoughts about V.P.?

Here is Paul Ryan in 2011 getting yelled at, somewhat incoherently, at a town hall in Wisconsin. At issue is the fairness of our nation's tax code.

Ryan calls for eliminating tax shelters, then starts to get shouted down. Then he says businesses are taxed too much, and he gets yelled at some more, and then he says 'If you're yelling, I'm just going to ask you to leave."

Here is Pennsylvania Congressman Patrick Meehan in 2011 being asked by a constituent why he voted for Paul Ryan's budget, which she says would "abolish Medicare."

Of course the Ryan plan would not "abolish Medicare"; there still would be a federal program called "Medicare." The Ryan plan, in Paul Ryan's words, works by simply "converting Medicare into a defined contribution, sort of vouchers system."

Paul Ryan Was for the Obama Stimulus Before He Was Against It

In an interview airing today with a Cincinnati, Ohio TV station, Paul Ryan said he "never asked for stimulus” money as part of President Barack Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Of course he didn't – Ryan is a notorious budget hawk, a man who cannot open his mouth without mentioning the 31 trillion dollars of debt we're dumping on our grandchildren.

Except he did: the Wall Street Journal reveals that Ryan did support requests for stimulus money for businesses from Wisconsin. WSJ posts four letters Ryan sent to Energy Secretary Steven Chu to support stimulus requests.

Politicians should support businesses from their home districts, including by fighting for federal funds. In our opinion. So why does Ryan feel the need to lie about having requested the money?

Updated at 9.09pm BST

8.52pm BST

Ana Marie Cox (@anamariecox)

This oughta be good. RT @kevinmaddendc: "Paul Ryan Set to Appear With Mom at World’s Largest Retirement Community, Defend Medicare Plan"

And so the co-owner of the Village Corner Deli here agreed to cater Obama’s visit Wednesday — but not before donning a T-shirt blaring the message: “Government didn’t build my business. I did.”

We seriously count this as intelligent discourse in American politics right now.

8.24pm BST

Reid Spox on Romney's Taxes: 'We'll Believe It When We See It'

After declaring that he had "never paid less than 13%" in taxes over the last 10 years, Mitt Romney challenged Senator Harry Reid to produce the person or persons who are, in the senator's telling, spreading the malicious rumor that Romney paid no taxes in that time period.

Reid is hitting back, with a defiant statement obtained by BuzzFeed that challenges Romney to release his tax returns. "We'll believe it when we see it," the statement from Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson begins.

Until Mitt Romney releases his tax returns, Americans will continue to wonder what he's hiding. Romney seems to think he plays by a different set of rules than every other presidential candidate for the last thirty years, all of whom lived up to the standard of transparency set by Mitt Romney's father and released their tax returns.

8.07pm BST

Garrett Haake (@GarrettNBCNews)

We hammered him when he wasn't available, so lets give credit where it's due: Romney has held three tough press avails this week.

We would love to see the president follow Mitt Romney's example and take questions from the media.

7.14pm BST

What Paul Ryan Wants

In the spring of 2008 Paul Ryan was working overtime to gain attention for his budget plan, which he calls "A Roadmap for America's Future." It was the plan Newt Gingrich would later refer to as "right wing social engineering." But what's in it?

Here's how Ryan presented his ideas in 2008:

"The greatest threat to our nation's economic future is the looming crisis of entitlement spending. The well-intentioned social insurance strategies of the past century, particularly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, are heading toward collapse.

[...]

"I believe we can and must set a different course. ... I've come up with a comprehensive plan to transform the federal government, to fix health care, Medicare, Social Security, our trade imbalance, our tax system and our growing debt."

Ryan's plan "to transform the federal government" did not win many converts in his party. As Ryan Lizza wrote in the New Yorker, the plan's first real ally was President Obama, whose administration began to talk about the plan as the Republican alternative to its own budget in early 2010. The idea being that if the White House could succeed in pinning a plan that proposed such radical changes to Medicare and Medicaid on Republicans, it would win the budget argument.

The White House viewed Ryan's plan as a political nonstarter.

Paul Krugman sheds light on why today in his blog, describing the "roadmap" as "a set of assertions" relying on "magic asterisks":

Ryan basically proposes three big things: slashing Medicaid, cutting taxes on corporations and high-income people, and replacing Medicare with a drastically less well funded voucher system. These concrete proposals would, taken together, actually increase the deficit for the first decade and beyond.

All the claims of major deficit reduction therefore rest on the magic asterisks. In that sense, this isn’t even a plan, it’s just a set of assertions.

In response to your request, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has conducted a long-term analysis of your proposal to substantially change federal payments under the Medicare and Medicaid programs, eliminate the subsidies to be provided through new insurance exchanges under last year’s major health care legislation, leave Social Security as it would be under current law, and set paths for all other federal spending (excluding interest) and federal tax revenues at specified growth rates or percentages of gross domestic product (GDP).

Do voters want a "proposal to substantially change federal payments under the Medicare and Medicaid programs"? Here's how the CBO report summarizes Ryan's plans for those programs:

Among other changes, the proposal would convert the current Medicare program to a system under which beneficiaries received premium support payments—payments that would be used to help pay the premiums for a private health insurance policy and would grow over time with overall consumer prices. The change would apply to people turning 65 beginning in 2022; beneficiaries who turn 65 before then would remain in the traditional Medicare program, with the option of converting to the new system. Additionally, the proposal would convert the matching payments that the federal government makes to states for Medicaid costs under current law into block grants of fixed dollar amounts beginning in 2013. Those amounts would grow over time with overall consumer prices and population growth

How does the Ryan plan find savings? By unhitching the cost of health care from payments to Medicare recipients; and by converting Medicaid to "block grants of fixed dollar amounts."

In 2010 the president made a bet that such a plan would never pass muster with the electorate. Now it appears we will get to find out whether he was right.

5.36pm BST

Here's the press pool transcription of Mitt Romney's full statement on his taxes.

I just have to say, given the challenges that America faces – 23 million people out of work, Iran about to become nuclear, one out of six Americans in poverty – the fascination with taxes I’ve paid I find to be very small-minded compared to the broad issues that we face. But I did go back and look at my taxes and over the past 10 years I never paid less than 13 percent. I think the most recent year is 13.6 or something like that. So I paid taxes every single year. Harry Reid’s charge is totally false. I’m sure waiting for Harry to put up who it was that told him what he says they told him. I don’t believe it for a minute, by the way. But every year I’ve paid at least 13 percent and if you add in addition the amount that goes to charity, why the number gets well above 20 percent.

The nucleus of growth is small business, that's where most of our jobs come from," Ryan says.

Rather than putting red-tape and blockades in the path of enterprise, "we're going to help small businesses".

"Romney is not only a good family man, but a great businessman," according to Ryan.

"It's the kind of experience you want to have in Washington. We should be proud of that. When other Americans are successful, we should be proud of that. It's nothing to resent."

Ryan moves onto a rather long-winded pie analogy.

"It is not government's job to slice the pie, it is government's job to create the best conditions for the pie to bake," or something like that. Think of it like a big oven.

A pie. This one has blackberries in it

Updated at 3.50pm BST

3.40pm BST

There is a "very clear choice to make" in this election, says Ryan.

We can stick on a path of "debt, doubt, decline" or "get back in business, reapply our principles and save the American idea". Well when you put it like that...

President Obama inherited a very difficult situation, Ryan continues. "The problem is, he made things much worse." (Applause). Also: Obama has run out of ideas.

Ryan says he wants to have a debate about Medicare. It is a debate the Republicans will win, he says. Ryan notes that Obama did not mention that he raided $716m dollars from Medicare to pay for Obamacare.

Paul Ryan is due to speak any time now at Walsh University, a Catholic university in North Canton, Ohio. You can watch it live at ABC, or follow live here.

Updated at 3.50pm BST

3.00pm BST

But what about the man in the other corner? Politico reckons that managing Joe Biden is "mission impossible" – noting that an emotional aside in Virginia, where the vice president talked of losing his young wife and daughter in a car accident, "almost didn't happen" due to overzealous handlers.

Attempting to keep Biden on the leash isn't always such a bad thing of course – it was also in Virginia that Biden said Romney wanted to put people "back in chains", but attempting to "limit visibility to a natural politician practicing his craft can often seem especially self-defeating", the article opines.

It’s nearly impossible to imagine Obama convincingly tell a NASCAR owner that he’d rather have won Daytona than be vice president, as Biden did in Stuart, Va. Nor is it likely that Romney would, after hearing of the death of a woman’s father, instinctively put his hand on her cheek in sympathy, as Biden did during a stop in Radford.

Yet because of his miscues, Biden’s staff lives on pins and needles. This leads to odd decisions.

For example, on Tuesday the vice president made an off-the-schedule stop at a cafe in the little courthouse town of Stuart . After meeting the owner of a Daytona 500-winning NASCAR team, Biden was asked about Social Security and Medicare by a crowd of a couple dozen seniors. In the aftermath of Paul Ryan joining the GOP ticket, it’s a topic Democrats are delighted to discuss. Yet just as Biden was saying “voucher-ize,” his aides started to not so subtly nudge reporters that it was time to leave.

It might seem like an opportune time to have reporters present to record and amplify his party’s message. But Biden aides sent the traveling press marching out.

Romney's staff have been "studying" Paul Ryan via video, according to Bloomberg. It's not quite as dodgy as it sounds, although it seems the scrutiny has extended to watching Ryan pump iron in the gym.

"Those who observed Ryan during his morning workouts ... discovered that he really likes to break a sweat," the Bloomberg article says.

Romney's team have gleaned all sorts of information on Ryan. Specifically, that he likes to receive paper briefings, rather than verbal ones, and that he is more easy-going than Romney (faint praise indeed).

After being his own boss throughout his political career, Ryan is now having to "integrate into an insular campaign that prides itself on discipline, loyalty, and message-control", according to the article.

Romney campaign headquarters has provided an entourage of senior staff to accompany their newest member. Bob White, a co- founder with Romney of Bain Capital LLC, and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus traveled with Ryan early this week. Romney foreign policy adviser Dan Senor, who first met Ryan years ago when both were congressional aides, has been charged with managing his campaign on the road.

Paul Ryan waves as he enters to speak at his campaign rally at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio August 15, 2012. REUTERS/Aaron Bernstein Photograph: AARON P. BERNSTEIN/Reuters

Updated at 3.51pm BST

2.12pm BST

Good morning and welcome to our Thursday live blog politics coverage. The Guardian's Tom McCarthy has some morning reading for you:

•The Associated Press dons coveralls, grabs a flashlight and plunges into the guts of the Medicare machine, to show how the thing actually spends money.They point out the difference between payments to beneficiaries and to service providers. They shine a light on the program's giant trust fund. They emerge covered in grease to conclude: "Obama's cuts also extended the life of Medicare's giant trust fund, and by repealing them Romney would move the insolvency date of the program closer, toward the end of what would be his first term in office."

•Politico's Jonathan Martin declares that Joe Biden "keeps spontaneity alive on the trail," an assertion with which it is difficult to argue. Martin admires the work of the brave men and women whose job it is to corral the candidate.